NPR Liberals Circle Wagons Around Stephen Colbert by Associating Him with Me

RUSH: As is the case practically every Monday, the audio sound bite roster is filled with audio sound bites in which I have been mentioned. And given that I am fighting the ravages of the common cold virus, I think I'm going to start with some audio sound bites and just ease into the program. You know, normally I don't play all these things that mention me 'cause I don't like to make the program about me. Everybody else does.

So the first one. Are you aware -- people may not even know -- the "conservative" TV host Stephen Colbert -- (Interruption) What? Oh, it's Colbert? Oh. Okay. Stephen Colbert. He's a liberal but his shtick is a pompous, arrogant, know-nothing conservative. That's the shtick. Anyway, he tweeted out something last week that has ended up being highly offensive to Chinese-speaking people. He made fun of their language. He said, "Ding dong ching chang," or some such thing. It was in a tweet. He didn't actually say it on his show.

And there was negative reaction the likes of which liberals are not used to. I mean, there was apparently a huge blow-back on this, and it caught 'em off guard, 'cause they're really not used to this kind of reaction to them being racist or sexist or bigoted or homophobic or what have you. There were demands that Colbert apologize for offending the Chinese. Now, the way the left is circling the wagons on this, you might say, "What does this have to do with me?" Well, the way the left is circling the wagons is by saying that Colbert was simply doing what I do. The mistake that he made was that he did it on Twitter where there isn't any nuance.

This was discussed on NPR today. They circled the wagons. When was the last time I stepped in it and some conservative media show circled the wagons and brought all kinds of people to defend it? It doesn't happen. Yeah, when was the first time? Doesn't happen. But when it happens to these guys -- for example, when Dan Rather did his phony and bogus George Bush National Guard story and totally embarrassed himself. He ended up being fired because of it. You people may not remember, but the late Peter Jennings and Brokaw hastily put together an awards dinner. They invented or created a new award to give to Rather two weeks after all of that happened, because they circle the wagons.

They were protecting the news. They were protecting the media. They were protecting themselves, and they were protecting their cause, liberalism. Because Rather was out there and it was a huge, huge step in it. I mean, to totally make up a story. And so rather than throw Rather overboard and use this as an opportunity or moment to move past the CBS Evening News, they had to circle the wagons and protect Rather, and that's kind of what's happening here with this thing that Colbert did.

I don't have the original tweet so I don't know why he did it and I have no idea. All I know is that the way they're trying to protect him is to say, "Well, you know, he's just actually echoing Limbaugh." Whether they know it or not they've just accused Colbert of copying me. The discussion was on The Takeaway today on NPR. The fill-in host, Todd Zwillich, speaking to Jeff Yang who's a blogger at the Wall Street Journal about this tweet that went out on the show's Twitter account last week that some people found offensive. It made fun of the Chinese language I guess and this is how they attempted to circle the wagons.

ZWILLICH: Let's remind ourselves that Stephen Colbert doing what he often does was actually echoing Rush Limbaugh who has many times on his show and without irony referred to Asians with the ching chong or a ding dong or some kind of ethnically stupid angle like that. He was sort of doing Limbaugh.

YANG: Exactly. And the problem, of course, here is that you lose layers of nuance, you lose context when you take something and put it into a different medium, like, for instance, Twitter.

RUSH: Don't you just love hearing these erudite, sophisticated liberals talking about all this in the approved NPR performance mode? Well, let's remind ourselves that Stephen Colbert doing what he often does, was actually echoing Rush Limbaugh, the well-known fascist conservative radio host, who has, as everybody knows, many times on his show and without irony referred to Asians with the ching chong or the ding dong or some kind of ethnically stupid angle like that. That's how you hear it on NPR.

The point is I don't know what they're talking about, many times on my show and without irony, referred to Asians with the ching chong? I do not do that, and I would invite them to go find all of these "many times" on the program. All I did was attempt to translate the Chinese premier, the ChiCom premier when he was speaking without a translator at the White House. Anyway, notice how to get this guy out of the mess that he's in, apparently they have to link him to me. Why? I don't know.

And then they said, "Well, of course here you lose layers of nuance, you lose context when you take something and put it in a different medium like, for instance, Twitter." Right. So I don't even know what the original thing was. I just find it curious, ironic, or what have you, that in order to bail the guy out they have to basically accuse him of ripping me off. But not doing it with the proper layers of nuance.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, just to be factually correct, I need to issue a correction. This Colbert comment, whatever it was he did, was actually made on his show and then the show tweeted it out on the show Twitter account, not his personal one. But whatever he did, he did say it on... Well, they're not "on the air," they're on cable. He said it on the wire. The point is that now I'm responsible for what he said. It's my fault. He just didn't do the nuance like I did, but other than that, it's my fault.